


What Cannot Be Said Will Be Wept

by 1Temmie_Official1



Series: Someone, I tell you, will remember us, even in another time [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Azula (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Comfort, Declarations Of Love, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Katara (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Lesbian Azula (Avatar), Love, Sappho (fl. 600 BCE) Poetry, Trans Azula (Avatar), sappho quotes as a love language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:27:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28867008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1Temmie_Official1/pseuds/1Temmie_Official1
Summary: Sometimes words were not enough.("I love you.")
Relationships: Azula/Katara (Avatar)
Series: Someone, I tell you, will remember us, even in another time [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2116947
Comments: 8
Kudos: 37





	What Cannot Be Said Will Be Wept

_"May I write words more naked than flesh, stronger than bone, more resilient than sinew, sensitive than nerve." - Sappho_

Sometimes words were not enough.

The words were written on their hands, the ink stained their mouths. 

"I love you."

"I love you, too."

"Love you, Zula."

"I love you, Katara."

"And I, you."

The words can't keep from falling like rain, each droplet making up for size in meaning, each droplet that ran down their cheeks made a lasting impression that they will know.

Katara told her story in her strength. She had always been so strong for so long, she learned to keep her words close to her chest. She kept her feelings there too, locked in a box beside the words she longed to say.

Katara was a figure of strength, so that was where her love was. It was written in the way that she cared in the little ways. All the gentle touches, the cups of tea on late work nights, the blankets when it was too cold. One would think that Katara's love was stored, and that was true. Katara's love _was_ in her strength, or rather, her lack of it.

It was something for Katara to break down. It was something for Katara to let her mask fall, to let the floodgates of dripping tears and ink stains be let into the world. She was afraid to make an impression on the page. She was afraid that her words would be taken away. That somehow if she let go of the locks on her heart, they would fall apart forever.

But she let go for Azula.

"I love you, Azula."

Azula had always wiped the tears away from Katara's eyes with a smile. "Don't cry, my love. _There is no place for grief in a house which serves the Muse._ "

Katara smiled with a wet laugher. "Sap."

"Only for you."

Azula wasn't the same as Katara, it made sense. From an outsider's perspective that was all they were. Fire and water.

" _You burn me._ "

"Then that is how I will go."

But people didn't understand. Azula wasn't fire, no, she was the thunderstorms from above. She was the lightning that made you feel alive. But she was always so loud that she never found the words to say, never had the words spoken.

So Azula took others. She had been so silent for so long, she had only heard silence for so long, that the words which dropped from her lips like prayer coloured her life with more love than anything.

" _In the crooks of your body, I find my religion._ " Azula whispered. Her body had never been right, the angles twisted in a way that she called wrong. She didn't expect it to be said back.

"And in yours I find mine."

"You don't mean it."

Katara's brown eyes fixed on Azula's, and they shone with a passion that could never be tamed. "I do."

Sometimes words were too much

Screams of agony and loveless pasts. The lost love of a mother that could never be reclaimed, if such thing even existed. 

Sobs of love that was lost, torn away like ashes in the wind. The echoing void of loneliness, something so open and empty that one loathed the vast plains of space.

Those were the days that words will never be said. Those are the days when the only thing that draws them together are the whispered murmurs of the other. The promises that it will get better.

Azula had never been one to love herself. For as much as she poured from an empty vessel, it hurt to have the love given back.

"I hate myself." The words were said as truth. Something repeated so much that only one so foolhardy as to believe it would be someone who doesn't feel the beauty of life.

" _You are, I think, an evening star, the fairest of all the stars._ "

Azula huffed in dry humour. "Sappho? I thought that was my line."

Katara only kissed her forehead. "It's mine now."

Azula paused. "Thank you." The words held more weight than both of them could ever know.

The other times it came in waves, the words being washed away in lies that they told themselves.

"It's my fault." Katara sobbed into Azula's arms.

"No." Azula wrapped Katara tighter. Oh, daring universe, why did you have to torture my love so? Each pearly drop of her tears down her oak-bark skin gives me more pain than any other has suffered. "No, and it never will be."

Perhaps they were two girls against the world.

But Azula had always been good at using other's words, and it was in those moments that she knew. Love was not only in the daily declarations. It was in the weeping tears of her lover.

After all...

_"What cannot be said will be wept."_

**Author's Note:**

> I can't mcfucking believe i put in a supernatural f/nale reference and somehow managed to make it poetic
> 
> Purely self-indulgent sappho-quoted Katara x Azula (Kazoola) hurt/comfort to prepare me for the emotional damage that is sure to come in the yueko series that I have to write.


End file.
